Robin Lowey is the author and designer of the award-winning book Game Changers – Lesbians You Should Know About and co-creator of the short film series Game Changers – Impacting LGBTQ Culture.
After creating Game Changers and donating books to every public high school in the San Francisco Bay Area—reaching more that 300,000 students in over 300 schools—Robin has a new idea.
Teaming up with filmmaker Eliza Karlson of Karlson Studio, she has begun work on a 12-part short film series as an adjunct to the book. These films will be a free resource for students to learn about some of the women in the book as well as additional heroes.
We asked Robin to tell us a little about the motivation behind the Lesbian Game Changers Project and how she managed to donate all those books to the schools.
“I’m a pioneering lesbian mom with two grown sons who went through the public school system here in California. Through my kid’s experience, I began to understand the consequence of homophobia and transphobia in the schools. I realized the importance of being involved in the community, so I began coaching Little League and soccer in the early 2000’s.
Then I volunteered for the LGBTQ Speaker’s Bureau. Going into local high schools to help dispel myths about LGBTQ people—that’s when I began to really see first-hand how more education was really needed.
In 2011, California passed the FAIR Act, a law requiring inclusion of LGBTQ history and social studies in the public school curriculum. A similar law has been passed Colorado, New Jersey and Illinois. There are very few resources to support this new law. I’m a graphic designer and writer, so I thought it would be cool to design a fun, colorful, graphic-novel style book featuring lesbian heroes who had made significant cultural contributions helping to shape today’s queer culture. I used crowdfunding and private donations to raise funds, then donated books to all the public high schools in my area.
Game Changers even won an award for the best LGBTQ book at the Indie Book Awards!
I began getting invited into local high schools as a guest lecturer, and a girl came up to me in tears, saying she couldn’t believe I was really in her classroom, and how she felt validated by the book. I started thinking about how I could do more.
That’s when I came up with the idea for the short film series. I applied and received grant funding to begin the project. The first three films are currently are in the works. They feature Kate Kendell, Olga Talamante and Michele Meow, each telling their story with fun graphics and timelines.”
The Lesbian Game Changers Project’s mission is to educate young adults by providing schools with valuable resource books and films that help fill the gap in education about lesbian history and foster an atmosphere of LGBTQ+ visibility, inclusion, acceptance and pride.
Find out more about the film project and how to get a book at www.lesbiangamechangers.com.